Music From The Motherland

Recently, I discovered something laying dormant inside my mobile blower... Podcasts. More precisely, Desert Island Discs. There are hundreds of 'em - and many are my cultural counterparts; from Gallagher and Brand, to Weller, Winstone and whispering Bob. If you're unfamiliar with the format. Guests (or "castaways") get to choose 8 songs (or "discs") to take with…

That Was The Trip That Was [Video]

With the backpacking part of this trip done and dusted. I've been in a reflective mood and put together a montage of the journey so far. Now it's onto Melbourne where another new experience awaits - living and working in a foreign country. Is Australia really the land of Milk & Honey? _____

Temple Tunes

There's something about a Hindu temple that makes me wanna sing a bit of Sanskrit. I've only gotta enter one of those places and the words "Govinda jaya jaya" or "acintya bheda bheda tattva", are in my head. So as I'm in India (the home of Sanskrit), I thought I'd find out what these old…

Parklife

I'm no David Attenborough, but if they've made somewhere a world heritage site it must be worth a butchers... So off we set for a couple of days in Kinabalu Park. Our accommodation was just outside the park at Borneo's equivalent of the Villa Bella* - a rundown homestay; cold and damp, with grubby bed…

Hanging with the Orangs

It's not everyday you get to see an endangered species in its natural habitat. So the opportunity to visit an orangutan sanctuary was too good to miss. The Sepilok Orangutan Rehabilitation Centre aims to return orphaned or injured orangutans back to the wild. Orangutans only exist on the islands of Borneo and Sumatra and are…

The only one smiling is the sun tanned boss…

Listening to this tune on my daily commute helped me realise it was time for a change. The Jam: Smithers-Jones (1979) Here we go again, it's Monday at last, He's heading for the Waterloo line, To catch the 8 a.m. fast, its usually dead on time, Hope it isn't late, got to be there by…

An ode to my fellow commuters…

"Wanna be wild 'cos my life's so tame, Here am I, going nowhere on a train, Here am I, growing older in the rain." - Noel Gallagher